Part 28

A transferring machine combines two or three of these strands; two for sewing silk and three for machine twist; and the bobbin next goes on to the “twisting machine”--a machine that is similar to a “spinner,” but the silk is twisted in the opposite direction from the spinning. To stand before these machines and watch how rapidly and how accurately they do the work assigned them is a revelation. No one realizes how nicely the parts are adjusted. If but one tiny strand breaks that part of the machinery is stopped by an automatic device which works instantaneously. After twisting, the silk is stretched by an ingenious machine called a “water-stretcher.” This smooths and consolidates the constituent fibers, giving an evenness to the silk not to be obtained by any other known process. The bobbins are placed in water and the silk is wound on to the lower of the two copper rolls. From the lower roll it passes upward to the upper roll, which turns faster than the lower one, thereby stretching the silk. From the upper roll it passes again on to a bobbin.

WATER STRETCHER--MAKING THE SILK THREAD SMOOTH.]

The dyeing process is a very important one, and upon its success depends the permanency of the various colors.

Vast tubs, tanks, and kettles surround you on every side, and the hissing steam seems to spring from all quarters. The “gum” of the silk is first boiled out by immersion in strong soapsuds for about four hours. The attendants, standing in heavy “clogs” (big shoes with wooden soles two inches thick), turn the silk on the sticks at intervals until the gum is removed. After the silk is dyed it is put into a “steam finisher,” a device looking like a long, narrow box with a cover opening on the side, set upright on top of an iron cylinder. The hanks of silk are placed upon two pins in the steam chest, the cover fastened, and the live steam rushes in around the silk. This brightens the silk, giving it the lustrous, glossy appearance.

The editors are indebted to the Corticelli Silk Mills, Florence, Mass., for this story of how silk is made, as well as for permission to use their splendid life-like copyrighted photographs of the silkworm. Many teachers will be glad to know that they can obtain from the Corticelli Silk Mills, at slight expense, specimen cocoons and other helps for object lesson teaching.

What Animal Can Leap the Greatest Distance?

The galago, or flying lemur. This singular animal is a native of the Indian Archipelago. It is from 2 ft. to 3 ft. in length, and is furnished with a sort of membrane on each side of its body connecting its limbs with each other; this is extended and acts as a parachute while taking its long leaps, which measure about 300 ft. in an inclined plane. The kangaroo can leap with ease a distance of between 60 ft. and 70 ft. and can spring clean over a horse and take fences from 12 ft. to 14 ft. in height. The animals that can leap the greatest distance in proportion to their size are the flea and the grasshopper, the former being able to leap over an obstacle five hundred times its own height, while the grasshopper can leap for a distance measuring 200 times its own length. The springbok will clear from 30 ft. to 40 ft. at a single bound. The flying squirrel, in leaping from tree to tree often clears 50 ft. in a leap. This animal also has a broad fold of skin or membrane connecting its fore and hind legs. A steeplechase horse, called The Chandler, is reported to have covered 39 ft. in a single leap at Warwick some years ago. Some species of antelopes can make a leap 36 ft. in length and 10 ft. in height. A lion and a tiger each clear from 18 ft. to over 20 ft. at a bound while springing on their prey. A salmon often leaps 15 ft. out of the water in ascending the falls of rivers.

Why Do We Call Voting Balloting?

The term covers all forms of secret voting, as in early times such votes were determined by balls of different colors deposited in the same box, or balls of one color placed in various boxes. The Greeks used shells (ostrakon), whence we derive the term ostracism. In 139 B.C. the Romans voted by tickets. The ballot was first used in America in 1629, when the Salem Church thus chose a pastor. It was employed in the Netherlands in the same year, but was not established in England until 1872, although in Scotland it was used in cases of ostracism in the 17th century. In 1634 the governor of Massachusetts was elected by ballot, and the constitutions of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and North Carolina adopted in 1776, made this method of voting obligatory. The ballot progressed slowly in the Southern States, Kentucky retaining the viva voce method until a comparatively recent date. In certain states, the constitutions stipulate that the legislature shall vote viva voce, i. e., cast their votes orally. Since 1875 all congressmen have been elected by ballot. In 1888 the Australian ballot system, which requires the names of all the candidates for the various offices to be placed on one large sheet of paper, commonly known as a “blanket” ticket, was adopted in Louisville, Ky., and some sections of Massachusetts. It is now in very general use in this country. The voter, in the privacy of an individual booth, indicates his preference by making a mark opposite a party emblem or a candidate’s name. This system originated in 1851 with Francis S. Dutton, of South Australia, and Henry George, in a pamphlet, “English Elections,” published in 1882, was the first to advocate it in the United States. The first bill enacting it into a law here was introduced in the Michigan legislature in 1887, but it did not pass until 1889.

Why Do We Call a Cab a Hansom?

The term is applied usually to a public vehicle, known in England as a “two-wheeler,” or “Hansom” (from the name of the inventor), and drawn by one horse. In a hansom cab, the passenger or hirer of the vehicle sits immediately in rear of the dashboard, the driver sitting on an elevated perch behind, the reins being passed over the top. The term cab is sometimes also applied to a four-seated, closed or open carriage, drawn by one or two horses, the driver sitting in front. The term is also applied to the covered part of a locomotive, in which the engineer and fireman have their stations. The word cab is derived from the cabriolet, a light one-horse carriage, with two seats and a calash top. In London, England, the cab or hansom was called the “gondola” of the British metropolis by Disraeli.

Where Did the Name Calico Come From?

A fabric of cotton cloth, the name being derived from the city of Calicut, in Madras, where it was first manufactured, and in 1631 brought to England by the East India Company. Calico-printing, an ancient Indian and Chinese art, has become a great industry in this country and in Britain, as well as in Holland.

Who Made the First Postage Stamp?

The stick on postage stamps so generally used today was invented by an Englishman James Chalmers in 1834. The English Government passed a bill calling for uniform postage of One Penny in 1840 and furnished envelopes bearing stamps printed on them. The people did not like them, however, and the adhesive stamp invented by Chalmers was substituted. The first stamps used in America were introduced in 1847. People have, it seems, always preferred to lick their postage stamps.

How Many Languages Are There?

It is said that there are more than 3,400 languages, including dialects, in the world. Most of them belong, of course, to savage or uncivilized people. There are said to be more than 900 languages used in Asia, almost 600 in Europe, 275 in Africa and more than 1,600 languages and dialects which are American.

What Is the Deepest Mine In the World?

The mine that goes farther down than any other in the world is the rock salt mine near Berlin, Germany which is 4,175 feet. It is not, however, straight down but somewhat slanting. The Calumet Copper Mine near Lake Superior is at a depth in some places of 3,900 feet.

The deepest boring in the world is an artesian well at Potsdam, Missouri, which is 5,500 feet deep or more than one mile straight down.

What Is Color?

~WHAT PRODUCES THE COLORS WE SEE?~

What is termed the color-sense is the power or ability to distinguish kinds or varieties of light and their distinctive tints. We owe the faculty of doing this to the structure of the eye and its elaborate connecting nerve machinery. The eye in man is specially sensitive to light, and the sensations we feel through it enables us to distinguish the different colors. Over 1,000 monochromatic tints are said to be distinguishable by the retina of the eye, though these numerous tints are, in the main, merely blendings or combinations of the three primary color-sensations, the sense of red, of green and of violet. Each of these colors, it has been demonstrated, is produced by light of a varying wave length, while white light is only light in which the primary colors are combined in proper proportion. Colored light, on the other hand, as Newton proved, may be produced from white light in one of three ways: First, by refraction in a prism or lens, as observed in the rainbow; second, by diffraction, as in the blue color of the sky, or in the tints seen in mother-of-pearl; and third, by absorption, as in the red color of a brick wall, or in the green of grass--the white light which falls upon the wall being wholly absorbed, save by the red, and all that falls upon the grass being absorbed except the green. In art, color means that combination or modification of tints which is specially suited to produce a particular or desired effect in painting; in music, the term denotes a particular interpretation which illustrates the physical analogy between sound and color.

Where Did the Term Dixie Originate?

The term was applied originally to New York City when slavery existed there. According to a myth or legend, a person named Dixie owned a tract of land on Manhattan Island and had a large number of slaves. As Dixie’s slaves increased beyond the requirements of the plantation, many were sent to distant parts. Naturally the deported negroes looked upon their early home as a place of real and abiding happiness, as did those from the “Ole Virginny” of later days. Hence “Dixie” became the synonym for a locality where the negroes were happy and contented. In the South, Dixie is taken to mean the Southern States. There the word is supposed to have been derived from Mason and Dixon’s line, formerly dividing the free states from the slave states. It is said to have first come into use there when Texas joined the Union, and the negroes sang of it as Dixie. It has been the theme of several popular songs, notably that of Albert Pike, “Southrons, Hear Your Country Call”; that of T. M. Cooley, “Away Down South where Grows the Cotton,” and that of Dan Emmett, the refrain usually containing the word “Dixie” or the words “Dixie’s Land.” During the Civil War, the tune of “Dixie” was to the Southern people what “Yankee Doodle” had always been to the people of the whole Union and what it continued, in war times, to be to the Northern people, the comic national air. The tune is “catchy” to the popular ear and it was played by the bands in the Union army during the war as freely as by those on the other side. During the rejoicing in Washington over the surrender of Lee at Appomattox, a band played “Dixie” in front of the White House. President Lincoln began a short speech, immediately afterward, with the remark, “That tune fairly belongs to us now; we’ve captured it.”

How Big Is the Earth?

The third planet in order of distance from the sun, Mercury and Venus being nearer to it. It is in shape a sphere slightly flattened at the poles and bulged at the equator, hence it is called an oblate spheroid. The equatorial diameter or axis measures 7,926 miles and 1.041 yds., and the polar diameter is 7,899 miles and 1.023 yds. The earth revolves upon its axis, completing its diurnal or daily revolution in a sidereal day, which is 3 minutes and 55.9 seconds shorter than a mean solar day. It revolves around the sun in one sidereal year, which is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9 seconds. Its orbit or path around the sun is an ellipse, having the sun in one of the foci. The earth’s mean distance from the sun is 93,000,000 miles. Its axis is inclined to the plane of its orbit at an angle of 23° 27′ 12.68″. The circumference at the equator measures 24,899 miles. The total surface is 196,900,278 sq. miles, and the solid contents is 260,000,000,000 cubic miles. As we descend into the earth the temperature rises at the rate of 1° Fahr. for every 50 ft. At the depth of 10 or 12 miles the earth is red-hot, and at a depth of 100 miles the temperature is such that at the surface of the earth it would liquefy all solid matter in the earth.

What Causes Hail?